Originally posted on LinkedIn
Never outsource the soul of your projects 💀
With my first company, El Palomo 🕊️, the core was flowers, not technology — so outsourcing the tech wasn’t a big deal (even though I still went broke because I was a rookie 🙈).
But at PrestaGente and Beriblock, where technology WAS the core, outsourcing was a massive mistake. At PrestaGente, we lost white-label clients because of the sluggishness of external development. At Beriblock, an “expert” team in Eastern Europe caused delays and cost overruns that drove us into bankruptcy ❌.
I learned my lesson: at Finco, Oscar Corredor and I built everything from scratch. With our own team, we shipped an MVP in 2 months and within a year we were processing 100K property appraisals. Our internal tech was the primary asset behind our acquisition in year three 💸.
At R5, all technology was ours. With millions of users, if something broke today, we fixed it today — because we owned the whole stack. That’s why it’s Colombia’s top insurtech ❤️.
Now at Ignia, the core is Education and Tech. So Camilo Bonilla and I are building everything ourselves. I’m sure that’s how we’ll move a hundred times faster 🏃♂️.
